On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Steven Walling <steven.wall...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 1:48 PM, John Mark Vandenberg <jay...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> IMO the WMF should stop focusing on English Wikipedia as a target >> deploy site, and stop allowing its product management team and WMF >> staff in general to be salesman for it - it is scaring the community >> that all WMF staff seem to be so heavily vested in this 'product' as >> the salvation of the wikis. >> > > This is rank hyperbole.
Oh, I love you too. > The MediaWiki deployment train delivers new software to all projects every > week. One stage is to non-Wikipedia projects, which actually get new > software *first.* Then in a second stage is for all Wikipedias > simultaneously. So the default behavior for rollouts, if all you do is > merge your code and wait, is that English Wikipedia gets basically no > special treatment..[1] That is unrelated; I am talking about 'features', which you address below... > Now, for larger feature rollouts like VisualEditor or MediaViewer, the > testing stage and eventual launch set their own special schedule. We have > used English Wikipedia as a testing ground a lot in the past, which is > natural when you consider a variety of factors.[2] That doesn't mean we > haven't worked hard to test things out with non-English projects. I urge the WMF to rethink using English Wikipedia as their testing ground, as using it as the "natural" choice results in 'bad' designs and community engagement around deployment. One of the more recent WMF products: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageTriage "An important note is that some of the configuration and code is specific to the English-language Wikipedia's workflows and as it's constructed now the extension is pretty much impossible to internationalize: developing a universal, stripped-down version is on our to-do list. (See bugzilla:48552.)" [bugzilla 48552 was created May 2013, and prioritised as "Lowest" by James Forrester, and no change since.] A lot of what I am suggesting is found in: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Okeyes_(WMF)/Localising_page_curation Flow is going to be a very major deploy. Do not make decisions about that deployment based on which language your engineers use at the water cooler or in commit messages. Employ the right people now to assist in a gradual deploy to communities that are ready for the pain involved. My guess is the English Wikipedia community would prefer to know that Flow has been accepted on quite a few projects before it commences any migration. But maybe I am wrong; maybe that community will want to be a testing ground. Will you ask them? -- John Vandenberg _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
